But there has to be more
by sharky-chan
Summary: Set preSnake Eater. FuryxSorrow. Angsty cosmonauts with flamethrowers. I watch far too much Tarkovsky.


**But there has to be more**

Snake Eater belongs to Konami and Hideo Kojima.

FuryxSorrow. I never thought The Fury was particularly furious. But then again I'm a lousy judge of character ;;.

* * *

He had been assigned to protect and escort him behind enemy lines. The other was classified as a non-combatant with extensive battlefield experience. A strange person and a strange mission, but he was a soldier and it was not his place to question orders.

At the briefing, his commander explained the importance of his assignment. He explained that his escort was a psychic.

Even when he heard this, he did not so much as blink. His face was blank, his salute flawless, but all the while the anger and indignation continued to burn just under his skin.

* * *

It was strange how he could remember his grandmother's face before the Revolution, but only her voice and hands after it. They were ancient hands, arthritic and gnarled from long winters and a difficult life, but still fragile, almost delicate.

Looking at her hands, he thought of a bird's wings and dry autumn leaves. He thought of the wind that came before summer storms and the way the fields of rye rippled in its wake.

But those were memories of the old world. The new world was built on machines and technology. It was built on conquest and blood and had no place for nostalgia or childish fancies. It turned out that it had no place for his grandmother either.

* * *

His escort.

A pale, wisp of a man with sharp features and hooded eyes. He was not smiling, but nevertheless his mouth seemed to twist with irony at some joke unseen by everyone else.

Hair slightly too long. Face slightly too pale. Delicate glasses balanced on his nose. Everything about the man spoke of education and good breeding. It spoke of books and an easy life -- an intellectual. He felt an immediate revulsion for him.

The words he spoke were terse and polite, both to conceal his dislike and to express his contempt.

"Comrade Pechalov, ghosts and spirits are scientifically proven to be the hallucinations of uneducated and oppressed peoples. They are nothing but the product of bourgeois imagination and idleness."

A flash of white teeth, and a sad, strange smile.

"That is good to know. That is very good to know. Now would you mind telling them that, or should I? They don't like listening to me when I say such things."

His words were light, but his eyes held no mockery -- only the distant and haunted look of a madman.

His resolve to hate the other vanished as he looked into those eyes; he could not hate such twisted and pitiable eyes. He looked away with a guilty start, feeling embarrassment and some other emotion flush his face. It wasn't until much later that he would at last identify that feeling; it was so much like fury but something else entirely.

* * *

As a child, he always thought his grandmother to be very tall. She had been kind but serious and rarely smiled. She was strong and always protected him. It was she who tended the farm when his father left for war, and it was she who buried his mother when she died of Influenza.

Back then he had clung to her and insisted that she always hold onto him. When they walked to the village, he feared losing sight of her in the tall, swaying grass. He would reach for her bird-like hand, and she would take it with a comforting squeeze. She never once let go, and he never once lost sight of her.

When he returned after the Civil War, his rifle slung over one shoulder and a bit of crust in his pocket, she was no longer tall. Instead she was gaunt and hunched over and barely came up to his chest. He had taken her hand in his and marveled at how small it had become. It weighed almost nothing, and he felt a slight tremble under that leathery skin - the flutter of a rabbit's heart.

He could not understand how those hands had held onto anything.

* * *

The other's lips were not the lips of a proletariat. Instead they were as soft and sweet as he'd imagined an intellectual's lips should be. He wondered what his own lips must feel like -- rough and scarred, perhaps, tasting faintly of smoke and vodka. And although he could not understand what the other saw in him, what the other wanted from him, he pulled him closer so that their mouths meshed together.

The kiss was gentle and full of pain. He tasted of grief.

It seemed to calm his rage and extinguish the anger that flowed through him as surely as his blood. Without this river of anger, he could feel the hollowness within his chest and a dull ache that might have been regret. It hurt, of course, but he understood that it was inevitable - this was as it should be.

He pushed the other to the floor.

* * *

His grandmother always crossed herself against the evil eye. She disliked the number thirteen, avoided black cats and interpreted her dreams. She said that God was still watching over Russia, and that when the end of ends came, the atheists would burn for desecrating the church and enslaving the Russian people.

She never looked at him when she said this, but he could feel her eyes on him anyway. They were words meant for his ears, and they both knew it. He always listened with his head turned down as if in shame, even though he felt none. He always looked away, unable to face her but also unable to condemn her.

Instead he thought of her tiny little hands and the sound of leaves in the wind. Instead of hating her, he hated her stupid and primitive God for not existing at all, or for dying a long time ago. He wasn't sure exactly which.

* * *

Grief and rage. They were connected by an invisible string that grew taut and inflexible the more either struggled against it.

She had seen this, and she alone had understood it. It was she who gave them their code names as a replacement for humanity.

The Sorrow and The Fury.

The Sorrow had tried to explain how the article "the" worked in English, how this was very different from using "a" or no article at all. The Fury hadn't understood. All he knew was that these were their names -- their true names - and that this was his family.

* * *

He had seen the curve of the earth and the brightness of the sun. He had seen how truly cold and desolate space was. It was a great blackness that held everything, and he both feared and loved it.

And then there was fire. And it never stopped burning.

* * *

He remembered the operations as an endless line of doctors and nurses, faceless from the nose down and speaking a language that was as far off and foreign as it was maddeningly familiar.

Or maybe he had just dreamed it. Maybe there weren't doctors at all, and he was already dead.

Sometimes he was alone with his grandmother. They stood on opposite ends of a field, but he could see the blue-gray veins on her hands and wrists and feel her gaze piercing his skull. It made the burning even more unbearable.

She would disappear and there would only be The Sorrow. They stood close enough that he could feel the chill of the other's breath and see the deepening wrinkles that fanned out from his eyes.

Eyes full of madness and lips twisted in a not-smile. A hand on his hand but separated by the thick plastics that were to be his prison for the rest of his life. The other said something, but the words were just a little too distant, just a little too indistinct to be heard.

He did not understand them, but he knew they were not comforting. Even so, the fire subsided, if only for a moment.

* * *

He'd once seen The Joy after the war. Their countries told them that they were now enemies, and so they became enemies. Enemies but still comrades, because there are some bonds that cannot be broken.

He watched as she walked past. Although they were enemies, until an order was given, he could no more kill her than she could him. There are some trusts that cannot be violated.

But there had been blood on her immaculate, white hands, or at least the smell of blood. And when their eyes met, he knew that The Sorrow was dead -- his body lost and his spirit gone to whatever dark and cold place the souls of soldiers go.

The Sorrow was dead and she'd killed him.

He did not move as she walked past, and she did not speak. He felt fury, as painful as the burns that would never quite heal and as deep, but he felt no fury at her. Never at her. There are some truths that cannot be hidden.

The Sorrow was dead and there was moisture on his scorched cheeks. On any other person, they would have been tears; on him they became bloody smears.

* * *

His quarters were cold and spartan. Everything was built and sterilized to accommodate his needs, and this stifled him. Only with effort did he pull off his helmet. It never got easier, no matter how often he did it, and the fresh air on his face always caused the same amount of pain.

All of his possessions were stored in a small box under his bed, so it took little time to find the item. It was old but well maintained, and the bullets slipped into the chamber with solemn _clinks_.

He pressed the gun against his head.

"Don't." A quiet, sad voice. He felt quiet, sad eyes boring into his back. He was not surprised.

Although he did not lower the gun, he eased his finger off the trigger. When he spoke, he voice came out flat and gravelly.

"Why are you here? You're not even alive."

"Spirits are just the result of imagination and idleness, right? Perhaps you've been idle too long, comrade."

"I...I can't stand the burning anymore."

The words came out more desperate than he would have liked, but there was no point in hiding secrets from a dead man. At least not this dead man.

The Sorrow leaned over his shoulder, and he felt cool fingertips on his exposed neck and under his suit. They felt just as he remembered them.

He closed his eyes as the other spoke softly into his ear, the words slithering through him like corporeal snakes.

By the time he opened his eyes, the other was already gone. The coolness of the hand had faded, but the smell of blood and the aura of grief still lingered.

Nothing had changed. The fire, the needles under his skin were still there, as was the sadness that passed to him and the other Cobras with The Sorrow's death. He would never stop burning -- even in his dreams he would burn -- and he would never stop waiting for the day when she would return. The day she would resurrect the Cobras, and they would be together at last, and at last he could die.

Everything was the same, and nothing had changed. But now he understood how articles worked in English. He understood that "the" was very different from "a" or no article at all. He understood the importance of such a little distinction.

After a moment, The Fury lowered the gun from his temple.


End file.
